Waiting

I have been at this since 1 this morning and as the clock strikes 8:30, I find the entire experience to be both stressful and slightly hilarious even if it is akin to waiting for the bar exam results.

"This" refers to waiting for the results of the medical licensure examinations. My best friend took the exams for two weekends and she told me that the list of those who successfuly passed the exam should have come out last night, at the latest today. As of this writing, there are no updates from either of our ends. The results were supposed to be posted in the official website of the PRC and when I checked with Google last night, all other sites such as blogs and forums were also announcing that they too would post the results as soon as they were ready.

That all together struck me as surreal. My parents took the board exams back in the 70s and the results of their board exams came out after about five or six months. My friend, on the other hand, hurdled the last cluster of exams on Sunday and the waiting period for her had been drastically reduced to just a number of days. Back during my parents' time, the results were posted on reams of paper and people had to fall in line to check if their names were on the list. With the advent of the Internet, my best friend and I need not go anywhere but just sit in front of the computer and wait. Not only that, to factor in a human element to the torture, as I browsed through forum posts and comments to blog entries, I practically felt the anxiousness of the med students who took the examination as they put their ordeal to tangible form through blog comments and forum posts...people I didn't even know. I figured that generally, the advances in communications technology had certainly done their part in making the wait slightly less unpleasant.

I was browsing through a blog site which was creative enough to make a red, flashing marquee-like header for the medical licensure exam results. I was not sure exactly if that helped with soothing the stress levels but the blog entry claimed that the passing rate was about 70% according to a source. People then started posting comments to the blog entry until finally someone named Vince wrote that he had a leaked copy of the results. The inquiries then came like a flood with people asking if Mr. So and So or Miss XYZ was in the list. He answered some of the inquiries but gave vague answers like, "Two of the three from School ABC did not make it." Then as quickly as he came, Vince just disappeared from the deluge of very angry med students who finally figured out he was taking them for a joy ride.

I thought it was cruel for someone to turn someone else's anxiety into web fodder. These people, like my best friend and me, had been waiting since the wee hours of the morning for the results and it certainly was not funny to make up some story about having a leaked copy of the results. As a matter of fact, I thought it was downright inhumane.

I am sure as you are reading this, you must be wondering why I didn't think of visiting the most reliable source online for the results of the physicians licensure exam. I did figure early on that the best way to get the news was through the official website of the PRC (http://www.prc.gov.ph). But, as they say, when it rains, it pours. And this applies to almost all things, I suppose, including stress-inducers.

Before visiting any other blog site at 1 in the morning, I had first typed in the URL for the official PRC website in the address bar of my browser and waited for the page to load. Voila! I didn't get a website which hinted at a website of the PRC! Instead, I got a maroon background with some text written inside a box. An icon of a police officer was pictured on the left hand corner of the box and the page carried a warning that the PRC website was classified by Google as an "attack site." When I clicked a button to provide me with more information, I found out that when Google tested the PRC site, malware was downloaded and installed without the user's consent.

I sighed as the comments of seething rage continued to be hurled at Vince in the blog site. I wasn't about to tell my friend to just unplug the computer and go to the PRC but sometimes, there are things such as Vinces and viruses which you don't worry about when you're simply falling in line and waiting for reams of paper to make their grand appearance.

Postscript:

By 11 PM, a few hours after I had posted this entry as part of weekly blogging assignment in a class blog, it finally became official that Sue Ellen T. Abad now had the initials "M.D." for a name suffix. She has gone a long, long way from the six-year old who initially wanted to be a nurse (if the pre-school yearbook were to be a basis).

Congratulations Bad!

Redefining Yellow

"It could have been the sunniest day," I thought as I stood in the midst of a sea of yellow. It was the perfect day to go out, take a walk, go for a run, do anything to celebrate the vibrance and warmth of a life well-lived. The sun was back in her golden throne after days of seeing nothing but rain and the dreariness of clouds.

I was standing across 6750 Ayala Avenue at 11 in the morning with my hair wet all scrunched in a ponytail. I had belatedly decided I was going for a walk and my companion was on her way. I didn't mind waiting because the breeze was cool and the air was thick with a stillness which had remained elusive for the longest time.

A few minutes later, I saw her approaching. She made her way through the street with the quiet grace that had long been her trademark. There was nothing pompous, nothing grand about her last walk except perhaps for the yellow blooms which kept her company or the four uniformed men around her who kept quiet watch.

I waited as she came closer, my fingers gripping the iron railings which lined the street. The metal was still curiously cool to the touch despite the sun's grand re-appearance after days of unceasing rain.

The stillness had since dissipated and there was now a wispy feel to the air, like giant cats padding quietly across a stone floor. My walk was about to begin any minute now and I adjusted the strap of my bag on my shoulder.

Nothing could have prepared me for the deluge of yellow flowers and the sight of my country's stripes - the deepest blue, the most fiery red, the purest white, the most vibrant yellow - draped over a wooden box.

As my former President's body slowly passed my inconspicuous little spot along Ayala Avenue, the tears came quietly in a stream as steady as the flow of people who had come to pay their respects to the woman in yellow.

Martial Law Babies in a Revolutionary Society

I was born during an interesting point of Philippine history - right at the fringes of the martial law era and smack at the doorstep of a revolutionary tide that was to radically reshape the environment that I was to grow up in. When I was a couple of months old, then senator Benigno Aquino Jr. was felled by an assassin's bullet in the tarmac of the Manila International Airport and by the time I was three, the Philippines had its first woman president in the person of his widow, Corazon Cojuangco Aquino.

Bespectacled. Calm. Gentle. Mild-mannered. A woman of quiet strength and relentless courage. It was easy to look up to President Aquino with all admiration and hope as her husband had now become one of my great personal heroes. Her smiling face graced the pages of a coffee table book on EDSA Uno, her thumb and index finger stretched out to form the letter "L," symbolizing the Filipino word "laban." That pretty much summed up how the American-educated widow was thrust into the public limelight. She had taken up the cause of her deceased husband and was now fighting for freedom, for liberty and for democracy which the Filipino people deserved. Little did she know that her fight was not to stop the moment she stepped down from office in 1992. The Filipino people still came running to her like little children with scraped knees everytime the cornerstones of democracy came under intense attack. Willingly she came out of the confines of her life as a private citizen, her clear, steady voice cutting like a knife through the haze, akin to the constant sting a probing conscience makes on a guilty mind. At the last moments of her life, she fought the cancer that had ravaged her body until she finally yielded to the eternal rest that she so belatedly deserved.

To be honest about it, I wouldn't be able to tell you exactly what she was like as a President in terms of policy. I was three when she took her oath and was nine when turned over the presidency to Fidel Ramos and all I cared about back then was my daily game of dodgeball. She survived seven coup attempts from disgruntled members and officers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and I do know she got flack for some of her policies, including the Comprehensive Agrarian Land Reform.

President Aquino was not a perfect President but then she was someone who worked very hard to do what she could in an imperfect society. The fact that she has not lost the people's respect and admiration I think says a lot about the kind of President she was. Her support was still sought after by people in all the issues which has rocked this country's foundations and has threatened to suck our people's pride dry as dust.

President Aquino's strength and courage as a woman was of a different breed. She was not a Gabriela Silang, not a Boadicea, not a Joan of Arc, not a Xena Warrior Princess. It was difficult to imagine her with hair in wild disarray, mouth curled in a raging fit of anger, arms raised in a battle stance. She was more of deep water which ran with a strong current that belied its stillness. I vividly remember a picture of her sprinkling Holy water on her slain husband's coffin. Ninoy's body still bore the marks of his death and his clothes still carried the bloodstains. Her face was composed and her courage was unmistakable. She was determined, unfazed and focused but all tucked within the folds of gentleness, integrity and conscience. She could be tough and unyielding when the circumstances called for it, when truth and freedom were to the impending victims of a pillage. It is interesting to note how yellow, a color which supposedly relates to cowardice, has come to hold a different meaning in the Philippine context.

Yellow: A Color of Courage, Faith and Selflessness

Ever since news of her hospital confinement hit the country in June, yellow ribbons were seen fluttering all about the metropolis - in cars, buses, bicycles, motorcyces, lamp posts, tree trunks. Masses for her healing were held one after another. Where so many politicians and public figures had failed, an ailing former President had succeeded - in uniting once more a nation that was polarized by bitter divisions in class and politics. President Aquino was a woman of intense faith and she had urged the Filipinos to unceasingly pray for the Philippines. The support through prayer came spontaneously like the yellow ribbons which sprouted overnight, like the love which a grateful people felt for the simple housewife who stood up against a dictator.

Her simplicity was astounding and were she not selfless, she would not have taken the burden of becoming the country's president along with all its trappings, intrigues and the immense pressure. When Ninoy Aquino was in exile in Boston for three years, Cory described that time as the "happiest" in their married life. She obviously preferred a quiet life away from the limelight but because her duty as a citizen called for being more than just standing by the sidelines, she bravely accepted what had been thrust into her hands.

A Tale of Two Women

In a time like this, it is difficult for me not to draw comparisons between her and the current President of the country. Both are women, both came from politically affluent families, both were educated, both were thrust into power by a peaceful revolution, both came to prominence at a time of clamor for change, both took their seat as the highest official in the land with the highest hopes of their people spread before their feet like a sheet all ready for treading.

One has earned her people's love and sad to say, the other is in the opposite side of the spectrum. One has constantly upheld the truth and sad to say, the other has not. One has consistently fought for freedom and justice and sad to say, the other has attempted to bury them. One has tried her best to live a life of integrity and has become a beacon of light to her people. Sad to say, the other, even after eight years, has yet to earn her own people's trust.

The Presidency cannot always be about popularity but it does speak so much about what a leader is when her own people have not ceased to respect her.

Walking By

As I stood by that railing in Makati on Monday and walked along with the procession up until the Ninoy Aquino memorial along Paseo de Roxas, I realized that most of the people who stood and walked beside me were people my age. Most of them might have been toddlers or little children when President Aquino came to power. Some of them might not have been born yet even. But we call came to bid our farewell and pay our respects to the woman who had allowed us to grow up in a society where we have a significant degree of freedom, rights and liberties. A woman interviewed on TV said she withstood the heat and the rain just so she could see the late President at the Manila Cathedral, saying it was her "only way to repay" President Aquino. I understand where she was coming from but in reality, we could do so much more for her by continuing to safeguard the democratic ideals she had fought to restore, by not allowing anyone to take away our pride as a nation and as people and by continuing to fight for what is right, what is fair and what is true even in the simplest of circumstances.

A quick to flashback to 2001: I was a freshman in university and I was standing in the middle of the intersection of Ortigas Avenue and EDSA. Right in front of me loomed the huge image of the Virgin Mary atop the EDSA Shrine as people chanted and waved huge placards, urging then President Estrada to resign. It was almost 5PM and I was urging my friends Em and Shyne that I needed to go home badly. I had gone to the rally without my parents' permission and I had to be home before my mother checked on my whereabouts. We were weaving through the crowd and we finally reached a clearing. We slowly walked towards Galleria but when we passed the gate of Corinthian Gardens subdivision, I suddenly stopped and turned around.

"Did you see that?" I asked Em.

"What?" she asked.

I turned around and walked towards the direction of the Shrine just to confirm what I saw. All of a sudden, my excitement took the best of me and I ran back, my knapsack jiggling as I dashed back to the crowd.

Shyne and Em ran after me while shouting "What's going on?"

I turned around and shouted in one breath, "Cory, Cory, Cory!"

It was easy to remember how Shyne ran faster than I did when she heard me. After all, she was shouting "Kris, Kris, Kris" like a true fan girl. It was easy to remember the faces of the people in the crowd looked when they saw the former President approach. After she did so without the slightest bit of fanfare or deluge of bodyguards. But I will never forget what I felt the first moment I saw her emerging from the direction of the subdivision gate. She was in black and walked slowly, casually. She unaccompanied except by her eldest daughter Ballsy on one side and her actress-daughter Kris on the other. The three of them had walked past me when I was heading away from the crowd. I knew it was the former President when I first saw her but my mind went blank just like the black shirt I was wearing. She had a pleasant look on her face and gave everybody a ready smile. I felt something indescribable well up inside me and that was when I ran back like mad just so I could stand in the same crowd with a freedom fighter.

That memory rushed back to me as I stood momentarily in front of the Makati Stock Exchange on Monday morning. The flatbed truck bearing her wooden coffin had come to a halt because of the crowd. When a quiet chant began somewhere, I allowed my fingers to form an "L" as I spoke in unison with the people on the streets: "Cory, Cory, Cory..."

Testing the Right to Vote

Aside from enduring the sweltering heat and practically numbing my knees as I staggered along Padre Faura in my two-and-a-half inch heels, it certainly was a privilege to have attended the oral arguments in the Supreme Court last Wednesday concerning the nationwide automation of the May 2010 elections. It wasn’t my first time in the Supreme Court but I still found myself eyeing the imposing pillars and ogling at the portraits of all the Chief Justices this country has had.

As the newspapers have reported, the Concerned Citizens Movement headed by Prof. Harry Roque had initially filed a motion for the issuance of a temporary restraining order about a month ago. The motion was not granted but the Court ordered, however, that oral arguments should take place between CCM as petitioner and respondents Commission on Elections, TIM and Smartmatic.

Many issues emerged in the course of the oral arguments but one particular argument proffered by CCM caught the interest of the justices that Prof. Roque was quizzed on the issue endlessly. This involved Sec. 6 of RA 9369 which provides for the use of the AES (automated election system) in at least two highly urbanized cities and two provinces each in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. The provision states as follows:

“SEC. 6. Section 6 of Republic Act No. 8436 is hereby amended to read as follows:

‘SEC. 5 Authority to Use an Automated Election System. - To carry out the above-stated policy, the Commission on Elections, herein referred to as the Commission, is hereby authorized to use an automated election system or systems in the same election in different provinces...

xxx xxx xxx

Provided, that for the regular national and local election, which shall be held immediately after effectivity of this Act, the AES shall be used in at least two highly urbanized cities and two provinces each in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, to be chosen by the Commission…

xxx xxx xxx

In succeeding regular national or local elections, the AES shall be implemented nationwide.’”

CCM argued that the proviso was mandatory given the wording of the law. The word “shall” was used for starters. In addition, the last sentence of Sec. 6 states that the AES shall be implemented nationwide “in succeeding regular national or local elections,” indicating that the “pilot testing” should first take place in two highly urbanized cities and two provinces each in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. The term “pilot testing” was not used in RA 9369 but this was originally utilized by Sen. Richard Gordon, one of the sponsors of the law when it was still in the initial stages as a bill. On the other hand, the COMELEC was of the position that the provision was not mandatory and that even if it were, it had complied with the proviso through its use of the AES in the recent ARMM elections.

Statutory construction has offered three possible interpretations for the said provision which could support either view. However, in examining the said provision, I submit that the mandatory view finds its support in another realm apart from what a former senator has called legal gobbledygook.

I do know from experience how tedious a systems project can be. The process itself is far from a walk along the Elyssian Fields. System development in itself is an experience which can be described as harrowing and horrifying. Don’t get me wrong, it can be a lot of fun but at some point in time, your head starts throbbing and you don’t know for sure whether your computer will overheat before your senses. In the process of system development, before the end product can be delivered to the end user, an important aspect is testing. Testing in itself has a number of stages such as unit testing to system testing to user acceptance testing with each stage undergoing a particular number of iterations. Factor in Murpy’s Law and you start to feel to have a steady supply of Paracetamol. But the bad news comes when you realize that no matter how many times testing is done, no matter how many iterations are noted, glitches and bugs can still make their grand appearance in the actual environment.

It would be healthy to assume that Smartmatic has conducted hardware testing on its counting machines along with a systems testing of the software to be used by the machines. However COMELEC intends to go full blast with the implementation of the AES come May 2010 and that is where my reservations start trickling in like a steady stream of code. The machines are essential, crucial even, in determining the outcome of the elections thus they should at least have some semblance of reliability. No, not just some semblance, they should possess a significant degree of reliability. Reliability, in turn, is assured by system which is stable and should perform according to its intended function without compromising or altering the data input. These are the very attributes which testing is going to highlight.

Before the AES is to be implemented, it is essential that it should first be tested in the actual environment. This is what the “pilot testing” intended in Section 6 aims to do. The “pilot testing” in two highly urbanized cities and two provinces in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao will reveal possible system problems which could be encountered including user difficulties, system defects, bugs, environment problems and the like. Only until all such permutations have been accounted for should a nationwide rollout of the AER take place. In systems development, despite all the testing a system undergoes, problems are still encountered in the actual environment as not all issues with the system can be anticipated. In the same vein, if the AER were to be implemented nationwide without first undergoing pilot testing with the actual users a.k.a. the voters, it can be assumed that voting come May 2010 will not be easy. The ARMM elections cannot be considered as the “pilot testing” intended by the law since different machines were utilized. In testing, the same hardware and software should be used in the actual environment, otherwise there would be no point in going into the exercise.

Knowing that these counting machines are crucial in reflecting the choices I make as to who should comprise this government come 2010, it is therefore reasonable to demand integrity, reliability and stability. In fact, it is my sacrosanct right to do so. Utmost protection should be given to every vote and part of securing that vote is to make sure that each ballot is properly accounted for. The right of suffrage is the very cornerstone of our democratic society and I would certainly want to be assured that my vote was counted – and counted properly, at that. No matter how some pessismists argue that this is nothing but legal fiction, there is certainly no way that I would allow my voice to fall into a dark unknown crevice, (no) thanks to a mere machine.